Thanks

[andres99]

Hello. I just wanted to say thanks.

I am a rather picky user as regards browsers.

Having been a daily Opera user for more than 10 years I have finally decided to gradually quit. They have been releasing beta-value versions as final releases for years and also breaking good functionality with no agenda I can see. In about 2010, they had almost a perfect browser. First they broke the Windows classic GUI (like Windows 98 etc.). I decided to make my own skin to duplicate the actual classic GUI and succeeded. Then Opera broke skinning with ugly overlay dialogs so that my skin was not usable any more and the overlays were neither documented nor skinnable as far as I could see. Then Opera broke the former perfect search dialog and added some obligatory search history etc., which again cannot be removed correctly. Then Opera decided to add tab grouping with no option to switch it off. For those reasons I have been using opera 10.10 for years, as the GUIs of newer versions just frustrate me. We fall victim to our habits but I am a rather specific advanced user with specific needs, including the option to quickly choose between 80 self-added search engines, etc.

I was looking for a new browser. Two years ago I skinned Firefox 3.6 to look exactly like my old Opera -- and succeeded Yes, I am probably a maniac but nevertheless it worked. Until Firefox made some changes since ver. 4 and disabled e.g. the option to display tabs below content through user chrome. And started some pretty annoying business about plugin checks at every restart. I could deal with that manually but in addition, Firefox was too slow. That is why I never really started to use it and still stuck to the old Opera.

Some days ago I found Pale Moon. The combination of speed and Firefox's configurability impressed me and actually made it possible to design myself the new browser I needed. I am glad that someone actually thinks about speed and functionality instead of breaking up the GUI and adding poor, lousy imitations of Apple Mac's design.

So, thanks!

On the downside, I started my Pale Moon experience with 15.4 and I use about 20 addons. I measured the starting speeds from the cold boot (which is not a decisive but still a telling indicator):
Opera 10.10 fully configured starts in 4 seconds
Firefox 3.6 Pigfoot's optimized build (with all addons) starts in 12 seconds
Firefox 11 starts even longer
PaleMoon 15.4 (with all addons) starts in 5 seconds

Today PaleMoon updated itself to 19.0 and now starts (same addons, same computer, same configuration) in 7 seconds from a cold boot. I understand that browsers move on but the ratio 7/11 for the benefit of PaleMoon against FFx 3.6 seems not so impressive as the former 5/11 with version 15.4. Particularly when Opera's stupid new builds still start as quickly as they did years ago. If every new major version of PaleMoon adds 2 secs to the startup, I will probably have to look for yet another barebones browser to fit my expectations. I understand that startup time is not everything and I do not want to start a discussion of what importance can be attributed to the startup time. My years of experience with different browsers just show that startup times from the cold boot are an important factor to keep an eye on.

But at this moment, I am grateful, rolling back to PaleMoon 15.4 and asking the developer to keep up the good work. I think this browser really has the potential!

[Moonchild]

Thanks for the feedback!

Pale Moon 19's cold boot startup time is inherently a little slower because it needs to initialize 2 JS engines instead of 1, with as a result significantly more I/O when cold booting. I don't think making that a decisive factor for the version of browser to use is smart, but in the end that is, of course, entirely up to you. Don't expect this kind of increase every version, either - the jump from 15 to 19 adds a LOT to the browser under the hood, but this won't be happening again any time soon.

Considering Firefox 3.6 is a LOT less complex than the current generation of browsers, i think Pale Moon is doing quite well starting considerably faster than the previous gen

[andres99]

I don't think making that a decisive factor for the version of browser to use is smart

I agree that this should not be a decisive factor. However, when other circumstances are quite close to each other, this may feel like an important factor. The difference between seemingly 'fast' and seemingly 'slow' startup times can be quite small (for me, it is around 5 seconds). Of course, some deception is possible here. E.g. in Windows 7, it seems that Microsoft has tried to hide some 'GUI-lagging' behind the fancy effects so that the user could always see something moving or developing but this does not do away with the actual point.

For example, the main reason I did not like to use Firefox (and stuck to opera 10.10) was Firefox's slow startup, which, for me, outweighed the fact that the old Opera, although fast, is increasingly unable to correctly render newer webpages. And I did not switch to Chrome/Iron or IE because of their extremely poor configurability.

But now, after some days of configuring and playing with Pale Moon, I am really beginning to love this browser. I will recommend it to my friends and clients. The speed optimisations and the status bar are brilliant. I just hope that Pale Moon will keep the GUI items I cannot do without: the menu bar and the separate search box (Safari has already followed the example of Chrome and 'integrated' the search box and URL box, as if all Apple users were on the kindergarten level — I cannot keep myself from thinking that Firefox and Opera may, for some reason, follow that folly one day; if that happened, it would be really good to have a sane browser around).

[Moonchild]

I have no intention of changing the current UI layout. It works, and works well for what it's meant for. I'm sure some people will say that it "lack of progress" but I say "it ain't broke", and this incessant tinkering being done, in my opinion, rather shows the "UX team" trying to keep people from questioning their reason to exist than actually making improvements to the browser UI.

As for the menu bar: I always have that on - I like having a menu bar as a standard UI convention for a windows application, with not just a selection of application controls, but all of them at the ready when I need it, without having to manually activate it. I was never a fan of the "App button" myself, except for extremely small screen use where it can tuck in next to tabs.

On the same note: a separate search box makes more sense - combining the two is one of those choices, IMHO, fueled by people wanting to push for minimalistic: reduce the number of controls and the space they take ever further, as a result reducing functionality of the program/UI by making it more convoluted to reach certain options or by making controls ambiguous in function (which goes directly against an intuitive UI approach). (That being said, you CAN search from the address bar in Pale Moon if you want, but it's optional, so if you're really hurting for screen space you don't necessarily need the separate search box).

The status bar removal in Firefox 4 has, in my opinion, still been the most ill-conceived decision by the Mozilla Firefox team in the history of the browser - and that's something I will keep in place for as long as Pale Moon is developed.